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Christmas: 1916 



O. R. HOWARD THOMSON 



Christmas : 1 9 1 6 

(ETCHINGS) 



BY 
O. R. HOWARD THOMSON 

Author of "Resurgam: Poems and Lyrics" 
"The Modern Comedy"; etc. 



Printed for private distribution 
1916 



Copyright 1916 
By O. R. HOWARD THOMSON 






C^^r< 



PRESS OF 

The Qazette and Bulletin 
williamsport, pa. 



NOTE: The incidents in "X" have been extracted from an article by Captain 
Maurice Woods in "The Contemporary Review." The last line, with the 
exception of one word, is a phrase used by Captain Woods himself. 



QEC -7 1916 (g)ci.A4540y6 



Christmas: 1916 

; 

"Christe eleison 



Mounts the cry of anguished souls, 
From the depths of the towered tropics 
To the white plains of the poles. 

Unending and unceasing ; 

Wrenched from the world's despair; 
Like the smoke of a burning mountain 

Rolls up the ancient prayer. 



Christmas: 1916 



II 

Blood-stained and still, the pudgy priest 
Is stretched, where once the grain 

Rippled its sweet green finery- 
Expectant of the rain. 

Ten yards beyond, a shell-torn boy 

Curses the priest's delay; 
While o'er the field, unmoved, untouched, 

The mighty cannons play. 



Christmas: 1916 



III 

Up ! and out ! and across the strip 

That separates foe from foe : 
Up ! and out ! with a yell and a shout 

The gaunt-faced fighters go: 
Led by a stripling from the ships, 
With a song in his heart and a jest on his lips, 
Over the field to the battered trench — 
Over the field where the dead men lie 
With their filmed eyes gazing at the sky. 
*'0h damn the Germans and damn the French 
And damn the English who never blench! 
Ha! club your rifles 

And use their butts, 
And jab your bayonets 
Into their guts!" 
Swirls of smoke and jets of fire, 
Corpses ever piled up higher, 
Chests that heave and limbs that strain, 
Blinded eyes and stabs of pain, 
Gleaming steel and leaden hail 
And one flag flying in the gale. 

"Oh whoa! you fellows: the trench is won! 
And a damned good sporting job you've done: 
But the big guns' hits 

Knocked the ditch to bits, 
So stow the grin 
And dig yourselves in. 
Oh damn the Germans and damn the French 
And damn the English zvho never blench!" 



Christmas: 1916 



IV 

Six ships running across the sea, 
As full of shrapnel as ships can be : 
Six days dodging of submarines 
And sweating over the might-have-beens 
Six days getting to men who give 
Their lives that honor still may live : 
And six men who in an office sit 
Counting the cash they get for it. 



Christmas: 1916 



V 

Blue sky and ten thousand stars, 
Hedged fields and evening- hymn, 

And the evil planet, red-eyed Mars, 
Below the horizon's rim. 

Grey shapes that sail in the air, 
Red bombs and cots ablaze : 

Women and children, blown to bits. 
To the sound of a people's praise. 



Christmas: 1916 



VI 



'Christe eleison /' 

Mounts the cry of anguished souls, 
From the depths of the howered tropics 

To the white plains of the poles. 

Unending and unceasing; 

Wrenched from the world's despair; 
Like the smoke of a burning mountain 

Rolls up the ancient prayer. 



Christmas: 1916 



VII 

"Mother! I write these lines, for it may be that I, 
After to-night, shall never write again : 
They say we charge to-morrow, at the dawn — 
The dawns in France are very beautiful — 
Well — if I die, it will not matter much : 
You ever saw through mothers' eyes and laid 
Over my dull metal, broad sheets of gold 
From out the stores of your great treasury of love. 
So, do not cry. I do not grudge my life. 
What better usage could I make of it 
Than cast it, as a woman casteth jewels, 
Upon my country's altar? Time ever moves 
A stream, majestic, towards its far-off goal; 
'Tis only we, foam-flecks upon its breast 
Dream it knows turmoil ; or whinny like to mares 
Robbed of their foals, because we are absorbed 
Before we have grown tired of the light. 
Into its darker depths. Dear! God still lives ; 
And noble faiths, refulgent as God's self, 
Live on with him. Visions of right and faith, 
Now lonely flowers in a wilderness 
Of weeds, making the world a garden : high hopes 
Of brotherhood : emergence of broad streams 
Of human joyousness: of simple rights. 
Not guarded by long trains of cannonry, 
But like fair Kings, enshrined within the hearts 
Of all their peoples, by the peoples' love: 
Laughter of children " 



Christmas: 1916 



VIII 

Oh, of old they offered her rosemary 

And silk veils for her head : 
But now they offer her unbleached sheets 

And wet clay for a bed. 

They will lay her down with her face to the north, 

The red cross on her arm, 
And a priest will mumble a hurried mass 

To guard her soul from harm : 

And some of the men will pray and some, 

Unfearing men and strong, 
Will figure the price that must be paid 

By those who did the wrong. 



Christmas: 1916 



IX 

"Oh, hops? Yes, he knew hops — damned little more! 
For all his forty years, before this war 
He never stretched his legs outside of Kent. 
Hops need much watching! so like a mole he spent 
His life in his own burrows, training hops 
To grow up sticks. His prayers were for his crops, 
If he made prayers at all. Ten months each year 
He sweated, that the taverns might sell beer 
Of which he bought one pot each night, himself. 
To make him dream of — hops! The heaped-up wealth 
Of India, had not dragged him from the fields 
Before the fruit the giant green vine yields, 
Was safe within the oasts. Italian skies ; 
Fair women wearing silken draperies ; 
Soaring cathedrals ; statues, gleaming white 
Midst cypress trees upon a moon-lit night ; 
The song of poets ; music, bridging space — 
He had not heard of: but, his face 
Would brighten somewhat if one mentioned hops, 
Or chestnuts, pollarded, to grow their props. 
God, a dull oaf ! And now, beneath a sun 
That kisses grapes, not hops, his drab life done, 
From all his stupid, hop-made cares released, 
He spreads for kites and crows a dubious feast. 
Yet, as I live, I heard him as he fought 
For breath, and with his short-nailed, coarse hand.«; 

caught 
At the brown stubble in his pain, mutter of faith 
Kept to the death ; and of a shining wraith 
That men call English honor ; of a light, 
Born in Arthurian times, which by its might 
Would break fair highways for a later breed 
Of nobler men. Good God ! queer words indeed, 
For one whose life was dedicate to hops!" 



Christmas: 1916 



X 

Within the crater, where dead men, in rows, 
Lay like sardines, against each other pressed, 

A calm-eyed Tommy smoked his short-stemmed clay. 
And spread his breakfast on a dead man's chest. 

Green skins and breakfast tea ! My stomach retched. 
And in a trench, abandoned on my right, 

I sought a moment's respite from the filth, 
The lust and fury of the hellish fight. 

Would God, I had not gone! from out the trench's clay 
A corpse, from its waist up, protruded evilly, 

Naked, with blue veins raised upon white flesh — 
The blasting climax of indecency ! 



Christmas: 1916 



XI 



' Christ e eleison /' 

Mounts the cry of anguished souls, 
From the depths of the homered tropics 

To the white plains of the poles. 

Unending and unceasing ; 

Wrenched from the world's despair ; 
Like the smoke of a burning mountain 

Rolls up the ancient prayer. 



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